Cameron vs Johnson: Battling for Britain

Mayor of London Boris Johnson attends an event at the Crossrail train construction site at Bond Street in central London on February 23, 2016. Crossrail, a new train link connecting counties to west of London to the county of Essex in the east, will be known as the Elizabeth line once it opens in December 2018. / AFP / POOL / RICHARD POHLE

As a rugby player at boarding school, Boris Johnson developed a taste for violent games. The mayor of London still enjoys a sporting metaphor. He once mused aloud about the UK Conservative Party leadership ball coming free “from the back of a scrum”.

It was also to rugby that Johnson’s fellow Eurosceptics turned last week after a tumultuous episode in Conservative history, the aftershocks of which are likely to reverberate for years to come.

When British Prime Minister David Cameron launched what MPs saw as a highly personal ­assault on Johnson — suggesting his decision to back Brexit was ­inspired by his leadership ambitions and making off-colour references (as some MPs saw it) to his divorce, some Eurosceptics were reminded of the notoriously ­vicious British Lions tour of South Africa in 1974.

During that ill-tempered series, Willie John McBride, the Lions captain, hit upon a coded call to alert his men to an impending punch-up. One minister backing Brexit revealed that the Eurosceptic hordes have now adopted McBride’s battle cry of “99”.

“The Lions had a call, ‘99’, which meant everybody piled in,” the minister said. “You’ll find there will be the political equivalent of that coming. There’s a sense of collective self-defence.”

While nobody expects that real punches will be swung in the corridors of Westminster, MPs are warning that Cameron may be out for the count even if he wins the referendum.

It is a civil war born of the decision to pursue an EU renegotiation that many consider rushed and botched. Cameron’s critics ­believe he was impelled by the flawed belief that none of the most influential Tories would ­oppose him. According to multiple sources, Cameron is torn between rage and hurt, and behaving in a way that MPs believe is injurious to his party.

It all might have been avoided if Cameron had followed the advice of Sir Lynton Crosby, the strategist who helped to secure the Tory ­majority after the general election last year. In meetings with Cam­eron, Crosby advised that the Prime Minister should not rush into the referendum.

One senior Tory said: “Lynton was advising Dave and George (Osborne, Chancellor of the ­Exchequer) to rip up the deal in Brussels and kick it all into 2017. His advice was to go to the summit, shout that it’s rubbish and then spend another year renegotiating.” Crosby’s fear that a quick deal would look like a “stitch-up” now appears prescient.

Certainly, former Australian prime minister John Howard, a long-time associate of Crosby, ­believes Britain is better off out of the EU, saying at the weekend it was a “fundamentally flawed concept” that threatens the sovereignty of member nations.

The genesis of Johnson’s decision to split with Cameron and back Brexit was on February 11, when the mayor visited 9 Downing Street to meet Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister who acts as Cameron’s chief government problem solver. The pair discussed the government’s plans to enshrine parliamentary sovereignty in law.

The proposal was drawn up specifically to give Johnson a reason to back the “remain” campaign. Boris returned from the meeting with Letwin to tell aides: “I don’t think there’s much there.”

The following Tuesday justice secretary Michael Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine, had dinner with Johnson, his wife Marina Wheeler and Evgeny Lebedev, owner of The Independent newspaper, at Johnson’s north London home. The dinner might have been a lot more glamorous. The actress Liz Hurley had been due to attend but did not; a tabloid newspaper had been tipped off. ­“Michael spotted a photographer,” said one source. “I suspect that’s why Hurley never appeared.”

The meal was interrupted at one point by Letwin, telephoning to try to talk Johnson around, but the mayor put him on speakerphone so Gove could join the ­debate. By the end of the meal, Johnson told aides later: “We jointly took a decision to go out, but both felt deeply conflicted.”

Yet the wooing of Boris, not to mention his agonising, was not at an end. The day after the dinner, Johnson visited Cameron in Downing Street. Several Tory sources are adamant Cameron ­offered him “any job in the cabinet except chancellor”, an account No 10 does “not recognise”.

But the reports have angered Tory MPs. One said: “It’s disgraceful. Theresa May, Phil Hammond and Sajid Javid have ruined their political careers by backing Cameron and he’s offering Boris their jobs. He demands loyalty but it only runs in one direction.”

The Cameron-Johnson summit took place without officials. It was a heated encounter lasting 40 minutes. A Downing Street source said: “They weren’t shouting at each other. They were having a proper grown-up discussion.”

But by another account, Cameron was “puce-faced” at Johnson’s ­refusal to fall into line. The source added: “It didn’t go particularly well.” A different source close to the mayor said the discussion was “lively” but “it stopped well short of physical violence”.

Johnson’s allies say the three encounters crystallised his decision to leave the EU. That Thursday and Friday, Johnson — then at his country house in Oxfordshire — wrote not one but two newspaper articles to clarify his thoughts, making the best case he could for both leaving and staying.

Johnson concluded that the stay article he had just composed “was not worth the paper it was written on”. An ally said: “He ­refers to it as vomit. He looked at it and said: ‘This is going to make me vomit. I just don’t think this is good enough. It’s a crap argument.’ He wanted to see if it added up to a hill of beans. He quickly ­became clear in his own mind that it didn’t.”

The following morning, Saturday the 20th, Johnson emailed Cameron to tell him he was leaning towards “leave”. Downing Street say they only knew for certain his final decision nine minutes before Johnson stepped out of his London home to address the waiting media last Sunday afternoon.

Johnson’s team admit that they “war-gamed” the implications for his leadership prospects, but insist the decision was one of substance. One member of his team said: “He just felt the deal and the sovereignty arrangements were not what had been promised, and he couldn’t in good conscience go forward and support that.”

Cameron disagreed. On Monday he hit back hard. His speech was written by civil servant Tim Kiddell, and No 10 says a jibe about divorcing couples “was not aimed at Boris”. But there were gasps from MPs. In Johnson’s Commons office, one of his aides said: “Wow, that’s pretty strong.”

Johnson defection emboldened colleagues, swelling the Tory Brexiteers to more than 140. A former minister said: “Dave and ­George are furious at the lack of deference from the 2010 or, even more, the 2015 intake. They were unprepared for the level of ideology. For them Euroscepticism has always been a tool to use, not a position they actually believe in. They thought everyone behaved like that. They miscalculated.”

Cameron and Osborne summoned waverers. One south of ­England MP was seen near tears in the Commons chamber as she ­realised she had to choose ­between a pledge to her constituents to back Brexit unless there was a fundamental reform of the EU, and her loyalty to Cameron.

A minister decided not to listen to Cameron at all. Asked to go to see the Prime Minister, she ­refused, telling No 10: “It will only make things worse.”

At a meeting of the backbench 1922 committee on Monday night, there was open dissent. Party chairman Lord Feldman sought to “focus minds” by giving a presentation on boundary changes in which 50 MPs will lose seats.

But when he announced the party was scrapping separate candidate lists for future MPs and MEPs, the Eurosceptic Andrew Bridgen piped up: “I’m glad you’re doing that because a large number of us in this room are rather hoping we won’t need any MEPs in a few months’ time.” There was loud cheering as Feldman stood mute.

The splits in the party extend to the gilt social circle that seized control of the party a decade ago.

When Gove attacked Cam­eron’s deal as not legally binding, No 10 wheeled out the attorney-general, Jeremy Wright, his predecessor Dominic Grieve, a serving and a former solicitor-general, a Cambridge law professor and ­Donald Tusk, president of the ­European Council, to rebut him.

Insiders say that it is Cameron’s private view that Gove could not continue as justice secretary after the referendum. Even Gove’s friends agree he would need a different job.

The fissures in Cameron’s inner circle have greatly concerned Chancellor George ­Osborne, who entertained the Goves at his Dorneywood country residence last weekend but now confronts a world in which half the parliamentary party and two-thirds of the Tory grassroots think he has made the wrong decision about the biggest issue of our time.

A former minister said that the way things were going, if Osborne did win the leadership he would ­inherit a Tory party that resembled “the small fragments of a shattered Ming vase”.

A leading Eurosceptic said: “George knows he has miscalculated his whole plan. He expected the entire establishment to rally round, with only the nutters and no serious leadership candidates on the other side. That has gone pear-shaped now.”

MPs say there is a sense of power ebbing away from Osborne (though it has a habit of ebbing back again). A former minister said: “When we went to vote on Tuesday, I saw George standing in a corner with one person. People used to think, ‘I must talk to the chancellor,’ but there’s a very new dynamic.”

In the Eurosceptic camp there is a belief that by losing control of himself, Cameron risks losing control of his party, whether he wins the referendum or not. To force a leadership contest only a third of the MPs backing Brexit would need to demand his head.

A leading Eurosceptic said: “He lost a lot of goodwill with the ­attack on Boris and threatening Gove with the sack. A lot of ministers who aren’t usually goaded are angry about the bullying. If he ­behaves this badly it is a danger for him. He looks like he has had enough and doesn’t give a shit about party unity. He’s trying to pick a fight with us. It will bite him in the arse.”

A senior MP says: “People are so disillusioned watching the Prime Minister overplay such a thin hand. He’s not in a personal position of security.”

In the offices of Vote Leave, just across the Thames, the Johnson endorsement led to a flood of hits on the website, donations and ­offers of help from grassroots Tories. “Before Boris it was seen as a renegade position to have,” a source says.

And what of the man who helped start it all? Boris Johnson has received a deluge of texts from colleagues praising his decision, some offering him help in the leader­ship election to follow. The ferocity of the attack convinced him “he has to fight” and friends say he must at the very least “lose well” if he is to get his promised “big job” in the cabinet.

A friendly MP said: “If you get to 60-40 it’s game over. The old boy will be on the backbenches.”

MPs see it as a battle to the death between Johnson and Cameron. When the Prime Minister next attacks, the cry of “99!” may show that Johnson is not without powerful allies.

The Sunday Times